"Fundamentally, we don't think carbon dioxide is a pollutant, and so we don't think these attempts are a good idea," said John Felmy, chief economist of the American Petroleum Institute, a trade group representing oil and gas producers.

*sigh*

John Felmy is a pollutant.

CNN.com - Supreme Court takes on global warming - Jun 26, 2006

According to three senior London doctors a 15-year-old girl was struck by lightning while using her mobile phone in a park during a storm.
...
"This rare phenomenon is a public health issue, and education is necessary to highlight the risk," authors Swinda Esprit, Prasad Kothari and Ram Dhillon wrote.

[ Color me extremely skeptical. I mean, I'm not saying it's impossible that the cell phone made the strike a teeny bit more likely, but it's far fetched to imply that it was a major contributor. I think the girl would've been struck anyway. I thought "don't stand in open spaces, particularly elevated ones, during a thunderstorm" was clear enough, personally. -k]

The Daily Telegraph | Mobiles 'kill when struck by lightning'

Random music generator with controls that lets you download your composition as ringtones for your cellie.

Wolfram Research applies cellular automata theory (as per A New Kind of Science) to generating music.

It's pretty awesome. Get into some tones and then go to the Pitch Mapping tab to begin being overwhelmed. I got some pretty neat stuff...

-k

WolframTones: An Experiment in a New Kind of Music

Most of the times I'm at a lack for words to describe something, it's because it's something incredibly absurd or stupid. Here, it's because THIS IS SO DAMN RAD!

Stop whatever you are doing. Go watch the video of this, right now. I don't care how important what your doing is... Watch this video, right fucking now.

You are about to see the best thing thats happened to the GUI since the pixel.

Update: Ok.. So only people who litter their desktop seem to think this is as cool as I do. We are apparently a fringe minority. To those like myself, this is fetish UI porn. I currently have 68 files and folders (no app launch shortcuts) on my desktop. I would _love_ this.

[ I fall into the presumed majority of non-messy desktop users -- i have one file on my desktop and it's a temp folder that holds things for a little while until i can properly file them.

That being said, part of my meticulousness may stem from the fact that file manipulation *is* so much less convenient on computer screens. The methodology is a pain, and so i keep things hierarchical.

A lot of it is aesthetic however... my real actual desk is meticulous as well. I have a stack of scrap paper for writing, and individual piles or folders specific to individual tasks or projects, but only if they're active. If i'm not working on them now (within a few days margin), they get filed into medium term (a folder stand on one corner of the desk) or long term (a pile of folders in my cabinet).

If my desk (or desktop) is messy looking it's because i'm working on only one project and it's really taking 100% of my time. Otherwise the overhead of finding information overwhelms my ability to focus on the task and i get nonproductive. My computer desktop reflects the same mode. For me, random stacks and piles aren't an organization technique, but a way to demolish all productivity.

I do like the metaphor of displaying information on relevance, importance, etc by icon size, weight, orientation and so on. That's worth quite a bit.

I'd like to see them adapt that interface to permit mouse use (since people aren't gonna change to a pen interface anytime soon) and build a tie in to MacOS. They also need to add labels. Preferably fadable ones, but each file/window/page and each stack or group needs to be able to show a label, so when I mouse over it I know which stack it is (e.g. "My Travel Plans, or "Data Migration Project". Give me those and I'd try it out.

BumpTop Prototype

Edward Tufte's new book, Beautiful Evidence, is now available. The table of contents and introduction are shown below.
The book is 214 pages, full color, and clothbound. Orders are shipped within one day.

This is his most beautiful book yet, but just as packed with essential information as the other three books for application developers, graphic artists, executives and anyone seeking to communicate through graphics.

I just got mine in the mail, so they're shipping now. Highly recommended, if only as a coffee table book, but worthy of lengthy study.

[ I just bought The Visual Display of Quantitative Information and am about half way through it. Stunningly great. It's given me great focus. I always hated powerpoint and Project (and their ilk, it's not a microsoft-ism in particular) but i could never quite put a finger on what was so bad about them. I get it now. I think his others will be on the way soon. -k ]

Edward Tufte: Books - Beautiful Evidence

A list of names around twin reflecting pools linked to a vast underground museum — a remarkable banality after two years of intense thinking — is a disservice to the events of 9/11 and the victims whom the memorial honors. Yet this comes as no surprise. The gutting of the memorial is only the latest step in a decision-making process that has virtually scorned the potential of architecture to address the magnitude of what happened on that day.

The site remains so politically and emotionally charged that every sane proposal has unraveled.

[ I emphasized the keywords I most agree with. It's truly repugnant how fouled up this project has become. Another failure of vision to add to the U.S's long list. -k]

The Ground Zero Memorial, Revised but Not Improved - New York Times

Towers: a new memorial for 9/11

Towers 1, made from stainless steel, seen here against the sky.

[ Edward Tufte's concept for the 9/11 memorial. I have to admit, I find it much more appealing than the present plans...

-k]

Ask E.T.: Towers: a new memorial for 9/11

[More Google Maps fun... for me anyway...

Check out my High School.

It's 7 buildings - the central, E-shaped main building and the two behind it and then two to either side (connected by glassed in walkways). The ones on the right side, by the field, are the gym and swimming pool, and on the left are the science and art wings. The little building towards the front where the arrow actually points isn't even part of the school, curiously. It's a library building that was part of an endowment (Carnegie, possibly?) a long long time ago. It was boarded up well before I started there in 92.

If you look close, you can see the KHS bushes on the front lawn... I find it strangely pleasant to think that those silly bushes can be seen from space. -k]

403 Broadway 12401 - Google Maps

Back in the late 1600's, the Dutch invented the two-sheet mold. The average maximum stretch of an experienced vatman's arms was 44". Many molds at that time were around 17" front to back because the laid lines and watermarks had to run from left to right. Sounds big?...well to maximize the efficiency of paper making, a sheet this big was made, and then quartered, forming four 8.5" x 11" pieces.

This was well before paper machines dominated hand made paper labor. A couple centuries later when machines dominated the trade (although many hand made paper makers still existed), and the United States decided on a standard paper size, they stuck with the same size so as to keep the hand made paper makers in business.

Oddly enough, the United States used two different sizes - the 8" x 10.5" and the 8.5" x 11". Separate committees came up with separate standards, the 8" x 10.5" for the government and the 8.5" x 11" for the rest of us. Once these committees found out about each other a couple years later, they agreed to disagree until the early 1980's when Reagan finally proclaimed that the 8.5" x 11" was the official standard sized paper.

8.5 x 11 is wack. The ISO standard system is so much more logical.

see http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/iso-paper.html

The U.S. Standard Paper Size | AF&PA

"Where parent behavior becomes a challenge for us is when they encourage dependence, and they become too involved because they are afraid their son or daughter will make a mistake," says Tom Miller, a University of South Florida dean of students.

I know far too many people that were raised in this kind of environment. I was not one of them, thank god. I was always encouraged to be very independent and while my parents kept me safe, I made a lot of decisions for myself, starting from a very early age. It drives me insane to hear the parents of friends *still* trying to control and shelter their kids, now well into adulthood.

"When I went to college in the '70s, contact with my parents was standing at a pay phone on Sunday afternoon," says James Boyle, College Parents of America president. "And there was no expectation beyond that."

I didn't even call that often. Once every 2-3 weeks. And I'm pretty close to my parents, just not constrained by that closeness.

Mommy, tell my professor he's not nice!